Bookshelf: Must-reads for Reagan centennial

Ronald Reagan was born a century ago Sunday, and the celebration is well under way. So's the campaign for his immortality.

Reagan remains the most elusive of the nation's recent leaders. He's a challenge to biographers and historians. But the 40th president understood the role and the image the job required better than any of his successors, who've all sought to acquire his magic.

Time does distill gradually, and Reagan's White House years continue to be examined - even as The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, a lobbying group, pushes to name something in every state for him. Reaganmania is just beginning.

Upcoming events in the centennial year include Ronald Reagan Days and gatherings at think tanks and his presidential library. The recent Tournament of Roses Parade displayed a Ronald Reagan float. GE, for which Reagan hosted TV's "General Electric Theater," is co-sponsoring college scholarships to honor him.

In Reagan's lifetime, Washington National Airport was given his name, as was a big, new federal building in the capital. "Ronald Reagan" also precedes an aircraft carrier, a mountain, numerous highways and schools, a ballfield, a hotel penthouse and a major medical center. A second Reagan postage stamp will be issued Thursday.

And there are new books.

"My Father at 100" (Viking, $25.95) by Ron Reagan turned into a news story last month for the disputed suggestion that the president's behavior hinted at Alzheimer's disease as early as 1986, and that surgery in 1989 revealed what doctors termed "probable signs" of the illness.

Ron Reagan's book, however, is more affecting for its story about a father and a son. "He was easy to love but hard to know," Ron recalls.

Ron Reagan does address his father's political life, career and influence, observing that the publicly confident, upbeat president "had little in common with the rage mongering infecting his party today."

But what stays with you are the words about his dad's formative childhood, with its rootless years, drunken father and "chaotic emotional tides" that Ron Reagan, turning pop psychologist, believes led him to seek order and routine. He also tries to unveil Reagan's "paradoxical character."

"He was warm yet remote. As affable as they come, he had, in his later life, virtually no close friends besides his wife. He thrived on public display, yet remained intensely private." To the son, the father "sometimes seemed more comfortable in front of a crowd of total strangers than he did sitting at the dinner table surrounded by family." Estrangement and contradiction thread the narrative.

There's some retelling of history, too, notably a snapshot of the Iran-Contra scandal, where he sees Reagan "woefully behind the curve, if not out of the loop altogether."

But the heart of the memoir stems from a son visiting his father's "former haunts" in a very familiar quest. As Reagan entered the late stages of Alzheimer's, a nurse wrote that he once mentioned Ron three times in 20 minutes. For Ron Reagan, that note amounted to "discovering a moment, however fleeting, when my father was searching for me."

The reissue of Ronald Reagan's "An American Life: The Autobiography" (Simon & Schuster, $32) ironically underscores many of the son's observations. Smoothly written with Robert Lindsey, it's much better than most memoirs by ex-presidents. The best, however, remains Ulysses S. Grant's, which deals powerfully with a soldier's life. Reagan's covers much but reveals little in 700-plus on-message pages.

"Ronald Reagan 100 Years" (Harper Design, $35), from The Ronald Reagan Foundation, definitely is a "commemoration," a highly caffeinated coffee-table book in which foundation chairman Frederick J. Ryan Jr. acknowledges his subject "might be a little embarrassed by all the fuss." He does note, however, that Reagan "would enjoy the parties" and "definitely have a big piece of chocolate cake." All that's missing here are the candles.

The handsome, "official centennial edition" is full of warm photos and laudatory words. The foreword is by former White House chief of staff and Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr.; the last chapter is titled, "The Legend."

Among the proposals to burnish that, to give currency and respect, is one to have Reagan replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.

As a matter of taste, that should be reconsidered. After all, Feb. 6 is Aaron Burr's birthday, too.